What tweets revealed about our shopping habits in 2021
Twitter, in cooperation with AdAge Studio 30, analyzed trends and tweets that help us better understand people’s holiday shopping tendencies in 2021.
Besides others, the results revealed that the holiday shopping season starts earlier every year, slowly pushing Black Friday sales into oblivion.
Furthermore, this year are people spending more on cards and increasing the usage of the buy now, pay later option. And while in 2020 were our main concerns about health and safety, in 2021, we’re more worried about “supply chain breakdowns, empty shelves, and delivery timeframes.”
There’s no doubt the pandemic keeps changing our world, behavior, and habits, moving us towards things we didn’t think of before.
The three following trends dominated Twitter survey results when it comes to changes in our shopping habits in the 2021 holiday season.
We started holiday shopping earlier, and we’re willing to spend more
In the Twitter survey, 37% of the respondents stated they started shopping earlier this year, and more than half of them expected to be finished with gifts purchasing already in November.
People are also planning to spend more on presents this year. Premium beauty and fashion products, personal wellness, and home appliances were on the top of their lists.
Trending categories within holiday shopping in 2021 (compared to 2020) grew by the following numbers:
Designer fashion topics were up by 119%, appliances by 64%, athletic apparel by 51%, and beauty increased by 35%.
Also, trending conversations about sports events were up 103%, and vacations requiring air travel rose by 60% compared to 2020.
It seems we are happy again
As we got used to the pandemic, we need less compassionate messages.
In 2020, we craved heart-touching posts and empathetic tweets as a way of coping with COVID-19. Back then, 47% of people were interested in holiday tweets regarding emphasizing families. This year, the number dropped to 37%.
Thus, in 2021, we clearly are in a better mood.
Customers got their sense of humor back and want to see more optimistic content. Memes, vines, and silly jokes are trending again, helping us pass the time until we can go back to normal.
Regarding marketing, Twitter revealed that in 2021, “42% of people want brands to use a positive voice in their messaging, and 32% want brands to be encouraging.”
We want influencers to tell us what to buy
According to AdAge, “during the holiday season, more than 1 in 3 people get inspiration from the celebrities and influencers they follow.”
This finding only confirms that influencer and creator marketing are increasing their popularity, and brands who aren’t taking advantage of this trend are willingly ignoring a chance to sell more.
While in 2019 was influencer marketing worth $6.5 billion, we expect this number to grow to the astonishing $13.8 billion by the end of 2021.
To get more insight from this field, Influencer Marketing Hub surveyed more than 5,000 marketing agencies and brands and published the results in Influencer Marketing Benchmark Report. This report shows marketers are becoming aware of influencer marketing potency.
90% of their respondents viewed influencer marketing as an effective form of marketing, and 75% of survey respondents indicated that “they would be dedicating a budget to influencer marketing in 2021.”
Thus, in 2022, we’ll most likely see even more social media influencers promoting brands and their products.
Conclusion
Covid-19 made us spend more time and money online than ever before, forcing us to adopt new practices and manners that are here to stay.
Pandemic restrictions don’t seem to impact us as much as in 2020, though.
We’re trying to get back to life and activities we used to follow before the pandemic started, and these circumstances present opportunities for brands and marketers to embrace new strategies and look for ways to reinvent their businesses in 2022.